Blackhawks' power play woes continue

By MIKE ASHMOREFor The TrentonianBOSTON -- As the Chicago Blackhawks wake facing a two games to one deficit in the best-of-seven Stanley Cup Final after Monday night’s 2-0 loss, the inevitable questions surrounding just why that is will arise. And those questions should start and stop at the power play, which went 0-for-4 in Game 3 and is now 0-for-10 in the series.

Overall, Chicago is finding just an 11.3% success rate with the man advantage, with only the New York Rangers (9.1%) worse among teams that advanced past the first round.

“Our power play coming out of the last round...you know, I thought tonight we had a real good look early, maybe another good look there,” said Blackhawks head coach Joel Quenneville. “But our power play tonight was definitely not good.”

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That lack of success hasn’t just been limited to the current series. Chicago hasn’t lit the lamp on the power play since Bryan Bickell’s goal at 7:11 of the second period of Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals against the Los Angeles Kings on June 2. While they now haven’t converted on 18 straight opportunities with the opposition a man short, Quenneville has found Boston’s fourth-ranked penalty kill (88.9%) to present its own unique set of challenges.

“I think we had some chances to get some pucks through the net, we didn’t. Our entries weren’t great. That’s something you want to look at.

Added Boston defenseman Dennis Seidenberg: “Well, I think we try to stay compact in our zone. Once the puck is bobbled, if you see a chance to pressure them, we do that. For the most part we’ve been doing a good job keeping them to the outside. Then there’s (goaltender) Tuukka (Rask). He always seems to make that save. We try to clean up for him to get the rebound or for us to clean it up.”

Special teams as a whole could serve as the key to unlocking the series, and while Bruins head coach Claude Julien has spent plenty of time stressing that to his team, he also knows he can’t overlook the importance of even strength play as well.

“We know they’ve got some great players on that other team,” he said.

“Our penalty kill has to be at its best. It really got better as the playoffs went on. But we really picked it up against Pittsburgh for the same reasons, same kind of a dangerous power play. Again, it just continues to give us some help in these games. Obviously we don’t want that to be a momentum changer against us. I think killing those has really given our bench a boost.

“Power play, we had some chances. We scored that one goal, which obviously with a huge one. We just keep plugging away with those special teams, but at the same time, I’m not going to change my attitude as far as saying that five-on-five right now is just as important. So we got to continue to play well five-on-five.”